Reviews from

in the past


Ringo Ishikawa does not deserve any friends

Picked it up because I thought it’d be just a fun beat ‘em up. This shit broke me Beautiful game if not a little slow.

Ringo Ishikawa is chivalrous. He's cowardly. But above all else, he's lost.

I was most compelled by the characters here, and certainly not the gameplay. It's the kind of game where you want a guide right beside you the whole way through, because you'll get fucked 50 ways to Sunday if you try to engage in combat early on. UX is a two-pack of ass in general.

The story is good, and all the characters have great dialogue. For a debut it's essentially a smash hit in writing and narrative, but the gameplay is an anchor that firmly weighs it down. My playthrough took 45 days ingame and clocked in at ~8 hours, and it got real dead by the end. You can say "That's the point!" all you like, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. A fixed 31 days would have created a tighter pace with more urgency, as well as encourage repeat playthroughs. Oh well.

You should watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle if you haven't already.

everytime I remember this game the biggest smile in the world comes to my face


The friends of Ringo Ishikawa was a game that took me back to my teenage years, viewed through the sobering & cynical lens of hindsight. The titular Ringo & his friends are a bunch of classic Japanese delinquents, with seemingly no initial higher ambitions beyond their schoolyard gang warfare, entering their final year as students with graduation on the horizon. Despite being a gaggle of petty thugs who smoke cigarettes & have seemingly little interest in their own futures, it's shown as the plot goes on that there's more to each of these delinquents than let's on. Your violent, dumb-as-rocks lackey Goro is a surprisingly talented thespian. Your number one brawler Ken has the talent necessary for a shot at a boxing career in college. Even Ringo himself is a shockingly erudite scholar with an interest in literature, a once-promising career in karate, and is a surprisingly idealistic, loyal, man of virtue. The one thing holding them back is their gang lifestyle & ideas, something that resonated with me as someone who saw this same situation play out dozens of times in my youth.

My own high school wasn't great looking back on it. Violence & abuse were common occurrences, drug use & sex in the hallways was an unspoken fact of life, and basically everyone was a minority of some kind from a low-income background. Lots of people I knew came from broken homes, or were working part-time to put food on the table, or were otherwise struggling with something no kid should've been dealing with at that age, the kind of things that can make studying for your history exam seem like small potatoes. It's a structural issue decades in the making that leads to people getting trapped in places like these, and unfortunately not everyone is able to escape it. Schoolyard fights that escalated into shootings. Football players who graduate with bright prospects only to then get arrested for murder. Kids akin to Ringo's gang members like Masaru or Goro, who have zero sights beyond the now & fully believe they'll be set for a life of petty crime after graduation. The short-sighted violent mindsets people box themselves into that end up spelling their own ends because they can't escape the circumstances that put them there.

I vividly remember hanging out in the parking lot after school one day, and I saw a kid reading a book on the hood of his car. His friends came up to him and immediately dogged on him for this and the supposed weakness such a hobby would project on your image, and he sheepishly put it away in his bag before he left with his friends. It's a small event in hindsight, but it was called back to my mind crystal clear during a scene where Ringo's friends rip into their fellow member Goro for his new vested interest in acting.

Ringo, for all his virtues, for all the books you can make him read, for all the training he can undergo, for all the studying & knowledge you can try to impart on him, still fully believes that his gang of schoolyard bullies is going to last forever, despite it being made rapidly apparent that everyone is starting to move on and find their own callings. Ringo still gets into casual street fights & latches onto his childish notions of schoolyard ethics, of "official challenges" and "rules," even as things spiral out of anyone's control & everyone starts to get in too deep. Much like some of my peers that I saw in my youth, he's a bright soul with potential and promise that is being squandered by his own adherence to violence and unhealthy group mentalities & expectations, and the simple fact is that as the days go by, everyone around him is starting to realize that they need to grow up and move past it all.

Everyone except him.

The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a weird game for me to cover.

As a game it's something I can't really bring myself to enjoy, but I adore what it represents, I love 80's Japanese delinquents, I love the chill vibes and character designs.

However at the end of the day, I just don't really have fun playing this game, and I think that's OK!
It just makes me respect those who do sincerely love the game.

Super charming game that doesn't have enough of it's charm to fill out it's gameplay, I like what's there, but a lot of what's there is repeated. Super charming art.

ideia boa, execução daora
palmas em especial pras músicas e pro visual em pixel art, mt bom mesmo, ambos
gameplay não é ruim mas tbm não é ótima, dá pra tankar
a história parece ser meio paradona, leve, contemplativa, isso não é ruim, parece ser justamente a proposta do jogo

n to na vibe agora mas um dia com certeza vou zerar, enquanto isso, fica a recomendação pra quem curte jogo de não fazer muita coisa ala stardew valley (sim, senti semelhança K), japão e seus deliquentes, e pixel art bem feita :)

This review contains spoilers

I spent so much time studying, going to classes, completing essays... I like to think Ringo eventually turned his life around and went to college. Still, you can see he's attached to his meaningless, directionless habits while trying to deny reality (like when he tries morally justify stealing from people he knocked out as if it was part of some honorable code of war. He's glorifying this empty way of life). It's hard to become a new person if you're stuck trying to pursue a fake, idealized world. There was a bug during the last sequence that made the soundtrack completely silent, but I think it helped emphasize just how empty his entire existence has become. He's an empty man, abandoned after everyone around him grew out of an outdated mindset.

This game is a gift that keeps on giving. The plot and characters are mostly pretty simple, but the variety of things you can do is, for me personally, the best part. I am on my second playthrough right now, and I keep on finding new activities you can do in this game. My only problem is that some combat skills you can learn are sometimes worse than what you already can do by default, but maybe I am just using them wrong.

Los amigos de Ringo Ishikawa juega al despiste constantemente con las expectativas. Tras su apariencia de beatem up clásico se esconde un relato íntimo y existencialista sobre un grupo de adolescentes que no sabe qué hacer con su vida una vez que lleguen a ser adultos.

Y lo hace con una filosofía de diseño de mínimos y con mecánicas que nunca se molesta en presentar que nos deja descubrir, experimentar y combinar por nuestra cuenta. ¡Y que satisfactorio es cuando eso pasa!

Es el anti videojuego en el mejor sentido de la expresión. Uno en el que puedes estar minutos pulsando un botón para que tu protagonista esté leyendo un libro, mientras pasan las horas del día y que, tras terminar, tras haber perdido tu valioso tiempo, la recompensa sea… ninguna. Y parece una decisión de diseño horrible pero no lo es, porque Ringo Ishikawa es una de esas experiencias que no pueden ser definidas por palabras, si no que tienen que ser vivida. Porque a veces está bien perder 6 horas de tu vida en jugar a un simple videojuego.

Picked up this game when it came out on a whim, and it took me around three and a half years to stop getting filtered by the mechanics - But when I did I found something truly special. The mechanics are still kinda ass but their obfuscation and how you have to make your own little schedules and keep track of stuff work wonders for immersion, and definitely strengthen the idea of how you spend your time the game goes for.

Play it if you want something poignant and unique. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but it's worth it long term.

Es increíble como un juego que estuve a punto de quitar a los 15 minutos de empezarlo me haya podido acabar gustando tanto.

Con apariencia de beat'em up, motivo por el que lo compré (spoiler: no tiene apenas nada de ese género) se esconde un ensayo sobre la vida desde el punto de vista de su desarrollador, yeo. Un juego en el que puedes hacer muchas cosas que tienen un impacto en el prota, Ringo, pero no en el jugador, y cuyo fuerte es el avance en las relaciones del propio Ringo y sus amigos, chavales de 16-17 años que por algún motivo tienen conversaciones filosóficas que parecerían ultra maduras hasta para personas en su treintena (el guion y los diálogos son una cosa maravillosa, hasta el punto de querer repetir las mismas actividades una y otra vez simplemente por ver qué charla nueva te vas a encontrar). Con una jugabilidad que no es nada del otro mundo, y a la vez bastante críptica, los diferentes eventos con cinemáticas que vas viendo, van en ascenso, y culminan en un final muy existencialista y potentísimo y que para mí justifica el tiempo invertido, no es para todo el mundo, es un hit or miss de manual, pero como primera experiencia en una obra de este tipo solo puedo decir que es un sobresaliente de los pies a la cabeza. Ah, y las referencias a libros y películas, así como la banda sonora, son exquisitas, me he quedado con ganas de jugar las otras dos propuestas de yeo, algo que haré pronto seguramente.

Top tier track: Prehistory theme

Time is slipping away. You have made decisions that have you behind the 8 ball and with both your youth and the school closing in, what will you do? This game challenges you to bristle at every missed connection, every missed moment and what remaining opportunities are for you. I lost time to this game and I mean that. I invested time but this game often has you just watching your character progress, doing the menial task, it makes you think about how you use your own time. Your own time as a gamer is fleeting and the reflective nature of this game gets you to ponder what’s going on in your own life.
It does that through true emergent gameplay . The mechanics are barely told to you, progress is unclear. You need to read around to find the school schedule. You need to study the movement of your peer group. You need to create routines. There is no map, so you have to deepen your own relationship with the area to really feel like you are understanding. You can invest in books or a tv. You can invest in boxing or judo. You can skip classes to pick up a job or study . The thing is that how you get to these choices or how they occur feel idiosyncratic. You have to do things in certain ways to get these to happen. You have to happen upon chance encounters, this is a real world.
They take this into the brawling segments . There is a moment that I realized that I had a truce with a gang only because I never thought to fight them before. I hadn’t realized that starting a fight with them would cause a ruckus. There was a threat , a warning, a whole new story cutscene days later in my play after I started a random fight with them . This occurred strictly because I accidentally started a fight somewhere I never did before. It made me realize interactions were so subtle to convey connections. The gang members used to light my lighter . I didn’t think of that but it makes sense that they were peers, even if the game wouldn't tell you that explicitly.
That is how the stories unfold. You never know when the intermissions show up and derail your schedule. It feels like real human development. You lose dialogue options because of certain events, days later people ask about what happens. You feel heartened by what’s happening in your friends life. The moment I got into Kens house after the big incident that got him to stop boxing made me erupt in excitement. I made decisions in gameplay that were unneeded strictly because I was moved emotionally or wanted to see how things progressed. The Yuna conversations were the reason I invested so much in literature.
This game tells you nothing though. And a lot is waiting and watching time pass. The cryptic nature is a boon a weakness. It can feel like marvelous emergent design but sometimes a game that doesn’t want you to do anything . It’s thoroughly refreshing and accentuates wonderful writing with a poignant ending. I came for a brawler and mechanically it’s solid enough with options that open up based on your choices but this is a life sim , and if you want to see freedom in design and trusting that you can save the end of high school as a troubled gang leader? This will teach you about design and time. (Look up something very briefly, like 5 minutes for some basic mechanics, just to set sail and never look up anything again, it is vague enough that I must say that).

I'm really really glad that in my lifetime video games have evolved to a place where when I say "I don't get it," I can talk about pace, theming, tone, story... all sorts of actual interpretive tasks beyond baseline interaction and aesthetic. The dude who makes these games is my analog to a director who I respect the hell out of and don't think I'm ever going to like anything he's made. Maybe one day it'll click. I'm not going to try and force that.

If Kenka Banchou do a banchou life sim using the cool factor (supposing so, since the only with english translation is like this), The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa uses everything more depressive about them. Sure, you have cool stuff happening but is just a small time fantasy, the reality comes crushing right after.

Everything is made to reflex Ringo and his friends and even the player too. If Shenmue suggests things and made you think something, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa ask directly. The cast is made of teenagers that already lose in life. Ken can't go to pro boxing because he always enters in fights and always end with a broken hand, Goro can't be an artist because is like everything is against him, Masaru have a gambling addiction being only 18 years old, Shiro try to do the right thing and always gets in fight and Ringo doesn't have anything anymore. He left the opportunity of being a national champion, he doesn't have the wish to do anything anymore, he can try to be a better student but for what? Everyone wants to fight him. Is just the very relatable moment in banchou works when you see the characters knowloding how everything sucks and even if they did the right choices the system is against them.

The mix of russian literature with japanese movies and mangas sure goes hard.

addicting enough to keep me playing through

too bad there isn't too much to do after you get the gist of it, i wish there was some kind of progression instead of random cutscenes triggered by chance


"They say that one of life's greatest tragedies is a talent gone to waste."

"What about those who have no talent? Are their lives wasted from the start?"

--

"The book's about nothing."

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa was and is a polarizing game. By virtue of its design decisions and lack of QOL its going to alienate a lot of people, fitting for a game in part about alienation.

If there is one word to describe the game it is ballsy. Only a ballsy game that 25% of its buyers will refund as per the devs own account would let you loose in this 80s Japanese town with basically no guidance. And whilst some parts of this feel intentional and help the mood of the game as you slowly learn how to get ahead in several ways, some just feel petty and/or dumb. Yeo himself could tell me that not telling me how to read books by sitting in any seat and pressing R or having to press B + A to jump to be able to do pull ups(which you have to do to join at least one club) is an intentional part of his design and I wouldnt believe him, and also I would flick his ear for being annoying.

The hunger mechanic is also not explained at all and I was pretty stressed at first losing fights and days trying to scrape enough cash from fights to buy food, but then I got 10k yen from good grades and basically had no money problems from then on, aided by the fact I somehow read a book which apparently doubles the knowledge you get from going to class.

Ringo is a game about roleplaying, not because of its stat elements that very assuredly non RPGs have these days, but because so much of the game revolves around ultimately mechanically inconsequential but nonetheless engrossing stuff. The quality of its writing really shines when you spend an entire sunday reading the Brothers Karamazov so Ringo can give it a good rating on Goodreads and have a 3 or 4 text box discussion about it with a classmate. Its a game where you smoke a limited amount of smokes for 440 yen a pack, which AFAIK has no effect on anything at a mechanical level whatsoever. But its about what Ringo wants to become, maybe you want him to quit smoking. Get straight As and go to the gym every day. Or you can have him play pool and beating up other thugs 24/7.

Ringo is a game that almost alienated me, and honestly I think reading up how to read books at home and do pushups, as inconsequential as they ended up being, increased my enjoyment of the game rather than spoil it. I didnt do many of the "quests" cause in a move that is definitely intentional there is no transcript or anything, if a friend says "Yuko is near the station tomorrow you should go" or something youre just meant to remember where that is in a game without a map and also to remember what day youre on and other such things. I suppose I could replay it but this game is definitely one that loses its luster by the end, maybe intentionally but it didnt seem that way to me and honestly Im tired of speculating on authorial intent, my experience dragged on a bit towards the conclusion even if that ending was...well it gave me something to think about certainly.

EDIT : Always the mark of good art, I have kept thinking about this game after I have finished it, it occupies my mind in a way I hadnt anticipated. Im bumping it up half a star cause I think for what flaws it might have its captured my imagination.

A gorgeous and deeply intimate game about growing up in a small suburban japanese town. Some people complain that it is boring… And I mean, it is, but it’s one of those games were that’s intended, and as purposely numbs you through its gameplay it transports you to the banality of its characters lives, with nothing really important to do and not much more on the horizon, seemingly trapped in this monotonous existence forever.

I think the story just works well with the mechanics, your day to day being occasionally interrupted by a couple handcrafted events that don’t really change anything but it kinda give you new perspectives of Ringo’s friends and acquaintances. Again, is not much, but is not meant to be much.

And as you fight your way through meaningless opponents, and discuss the books you read in class (you can read James Joyce’s Ulysses!) I was reminded of the uber famous first page of Blood Meridian “and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence”, and it just clicked with me in a way I wasn’t expecting, it became a more vivid experience. Also, McCarthy’s also commonly criticized for being boring, granted in part in the sheer brutality of what he depicts but also because even his elaborated, epic, almost biblical prose tends to get repetitive, but, as with this game, that’s also by design. Hell, The Road is, in my opinion, an extensive exercise on repetitiveness.

Any way, even if it can be dull, I really think thad adds to the experience, and the writing and visuals are good enough to justify it.

Fui conquistar suzuran e ganhei depressão.

Não tem muito o que falar da historia sem estragar a experiência. São jovens confusos no seus últimos dias de colegial buscando objetivos e novas experiências, e com isso muitas das vezes se expressando com a força.

Na estrutura, ele é um jogo é um mundo aberto sem mapa ou qualquer objetivo, o jogador é livre para fazer o que bem entender diariamente controlando Ringo. Seja estudar, trabalhar, malhar, roubar, entrar em confusão e etc.

Na parte técnica faltou um polimento, mas nada que vá estragar o jogo. O combate é bem simples, um botão para soco outro para chute, novos golpes são aprendidos praticando alguma arte marcial.

Não sei muito bem como colocar em palavras o que estou sentindo sobre ele no momento mas com certeza um dos meus favoritos, cada hora nele valeu muito a pena, é minha ambientação e tema favorito nos mangás e aqui é feito com maestria. É muito bom vivenciar o drama de cada personagem.


As a guy who loves Crows and Kyou Kara Ore Wa, and who hates Tokyo Revengers, I can safely say this game was good.

While I kind of wanted a little more to it (like perhaps the ability to join the basketball team or something, idk), I understand that the scope of a game like this has to be relatively small. It's a game where everything is inevitable.

The only thing I would probably change is the music that plays when you enter the school, and the fight music interrupting that beautiful guitar on the west-side of town.